Assumir a imperfeição (parte I

Lá em cima no banner deste blogue pode ler-se "Promotor da concorrência imperfeita e dos monopólios informais".

Vamos primeiro à concorrência imperfeita. Ainda esta semana ao preparar um relatório para uma empresa coloquei uma versão deste postal:

Atentemos na pergunta:

- Prefere ser rico e com saúde ou pobre e doentio?

A resposta que qualquer pessoa normal dará será:

- Qual é o assunto? Não há assunto!

Qualquer pessoa normal optará pelo quadrante 2, toda a gente prefere a opção ser rico e ter saúde. Ora, escolhas estratégicas deste tipo estão erradas. Porquê? Porque todos os agentes farão a mesma escolha, não haverá diferenciação e, por isso, teremos uma situação de concorrência perfeita... No final só existirá um agente!

Escolhas estratégicas genuínas são as que se referem aos quadrantes 1 - Ser pobre, mas ter saúde, ou 4- Ser rico, mas ter uma saúde debilitada.

Escolhas estratégicas genuínas têm sempre um ou mais, "mas". Um teste simples consiste em ler uma suposta estratégia e pensar no seu contrário. Se o seu contrário for estúpido ou absurdo, então não estamos perante uma verdadeira estratégia.

Ao fazer escolhas dolorosas, a 1 ou 4, as primeiras empresas ganham uma vantagem competitiva transiente que lhes permite começar a iterar nesse espaço. As mais dinâmicas avançam para escolhas diferenciadoras sucessivas acabando, sempre transitoriamente, com um monopólio informal. São os fornecedores de algo único valorizado por alguns clientes-alvo. Únicos não porque estejam protegidos por governos, mas porque tiveram a coragem de apostar numas coisas em detrimento de outras, assumiram a sua imperfeição.

Continua.

A importância das "market frictions"

"the presence of firm-level heterogeneity implies the presence of various market frictions, like causal ambiguity and asset specificity/uniqueness.

...

These market frictions interact to create the need for cost minimization, or the opportunity for value creation and value capture.

...

We then apply the market-frictions logic to organizational boundary and economic rents questions to show how joining cost minimization, value creation, and value capture can be achieved through considering various market frictions. More generally, we maintain that it is useful to view market frictions as the fundamental building blocks of strategic management, and the analysis of new combinations of market frictions may provide new strategic insights."

As "market frictions" são o que cria as imperfeições de mercado, são o que gera a concorrência imperfeita. Sem imperfeições de mercado não há criação e captura de valor, só há lucros raquíticos e empobrecimento. Faz-me tanta impressão que estas coisas não sejam evidentes para a academia.

Recordar o lema deste blogue e do nosso trabalho:

• Promotor da concorrência imperfeita, dos monopólios informais e das rendas pornográficas (Março de 2021)
• "Perfect markets are for the poor" (Outubro de 2021)
• Promotor da concorrência imperfeita, dos monopólios informais e das rendas excessivas (Dezembro de 2021)
• Cartão de visita (Agosto de 2011)

Trechos retirados de "Market frictions as building blocks of an organizational economics approach to strategic management"

Subir preços

"Why Companies Raise Their Prices: Because They Can"

"In 2021, US companies logged their most profitable year since the 1950s, as many took advantage of economies of scale and other more efficient production processes. Yet, firms increasingly held on to the savings they gained from these reduced costs, rather than passing them on to customers in the form of lower prices.

...

markups—the difference between prices charged at checkout and the marginal costs incurred by a company in order to make a product—climbed about 25 percent between 2006 and 2019

...

The researchers came to a startling conclusion: Consumers were 30 percent less price sensitive—meaning less likely to abandon favorite brands and seek cheaper equivalent products—in 2019 than they were in 2006.

...

Meanwhile, company costs have declined over time as firms have squeezed more productivity out of increasingly efficient operations. Since 2006, marginal costs have dropped by 2.1 percent annually on average, the authors estimate. In the latter part of the study period, from 2017 to 2019, firm costs were about 25 percentage points lower versus 2006.

Rising markups come from either price increases or marginal cost reductions."

"Which Companies Can Raise Prices Without Angering Customers?"

"In all, we examined 846 large publicly traded corporations last year through the lens of 34 separate indicators in five categories: customer satisfaction, employee engagement and development, innovation, social responsibility and financial strength.
...
To build our ranking, companies are compared in each of the five areas, as well as their overall effectiveness, through standardized scores with a typical range of 0 to 100 and a mean of 50.

...

In our latest research, prompted by concerns over inflation, we explored the correlation between net profit margin-the percentage of profit a company produces from its total revenue-and customer satisfaction for 2021.

Of the 24 industries we looked at, 11 showed no meaningful statistical relationship between the two. Others, however, stood out. In six industries-household and personal products, autos, telecommunications, consumer services, banks and pharmaceuticals-there was a significant positive correlation between profit margin and customer satisfaction.

This means the two variables move in the same direction.

When one goes up, the other goes up; when one goes down, the other goes down. And it implies that, in general, firms in these industries have a fair bit of leeway to raise prices without making their customers disgruntled.

"We call this pricing power,'

...
At the other end of the spectrum are companies in industries with a negative correlation between profit margin and customer satisfaction. Across these sectors, when net profit margin goes up, customer satisfaction goes down-and vice versa.
...
What's more, any company with low customer satisfaction may well have trouble raising prices-regardless of the industry it's in. "It's a delicate calibration,""

"we look for an important asymmetry"

"In business competition, one cannot expect to make a profit without some source of advantage. We look for advantage in four basic places: in information, knowing something that others do not; in know-how, having a skill, or patent, that others do not have; in position, having a reputation, brand, or existing market system (for example, distribution, supply chains) that others cannot readily imitate or push aside; in efficiency, whether based on scale, technology, experience, or other factor that others cannot easily attain; and in the management of systems, whether bridging complexity or moving with speed and precision, that others do not have. In each case, we look for an important asymmetry, one that can be turned to advantage, between you and competitors"

Em busca de uma oportunidade para criar concorrência imperfeita.

Trecho retirado de "The Crux - How Leaders Become Strategists" de Richard P. Rumelt. 

Acerca da concorrência imperfeita

Roger Martin em "Is Strategy a Zero-Sum Game?", publicado no final de Dezembro passado, toca vários temas clássicos deste blogue.

"The first critique I get is that my insistence on pursuing a winning strategy is just too aggressive. The thought is that if the organization I am encouraging to win manages to figure out how to win, then someone else will lose in a zero-sum game in which society is no better off. [Moi ici: Gente que não conhece as toutinegras de MacArthur ou as paramécias de Gause, gente que continua no século XX e ainda pensa numa paisagem competitiva com um único pico] 

...

[Moi ici: Agora até o tema da concorrência perfeita ele mete ao barulho] Economists love ‘perfect competition.’ [Moi ici: A malta da tríade, lembram-se? Ainda ontem escrevi sobre eles] This is when numerous competitors compete in a given space — what I would call a particular Where-to-Play (WTP) ... Without competition, a monopoly provider would set price at B (the volume at which marginal revenue and marginal cost are equal) and the market would clear at a lower volume. Hence fewer customers would benefit from the offering, and all would pay a higher price than under vigorous competition. Thus, the absence of vigorous competition in this WTP results in a deadweight cost to society.

Thus, economists don’t like winning either! They dream of having competition in a given space look like this, in which (for example) six competitors duke it out in almost identical WTPs, approximating perfect competition. Nobody wins — they just play.

...

[Moi ici: Entra a concorrência imperfeita] My Dream is industries that evolve like the following:[Moi ici: Como não recordar o Senhor dos Perdões]

Customers are heterogeneous and when I think about a company’s WTP, I think of it as a circle with the customer who thinks the company’s offering is absolutely perfect, and hence puts the highest value on it, at the center of the company’s WTP circle.

...

In My Dream, rather than compete head-to-head with the same WTPs and same/similar HTWs, the six competitors spread out and reduce their overlap. Each competitor wins in a somewhat different WTP. Many more customers get an offering that is perfect for them. Competition happens — but it the boundary territories at the intersections of the individual WTPs, rather than across each competitor’s entire WTP. That ensures that while the competition won’t be as intense as in the Economist’s Dream, it will still be meaningful.[Moi ici: É isto que as toutinegras de MacArthur ilustram]

If each company pursues a winning strategy in its carefully defined WTP, each can prosper and achieve a level of profitability that enables it to innovate and move the market forward on behalf of its customers. [Moi ici: O meu clássico "Viver e deixar viver"]

...

Playing to win isn’t zero-sum or obsolete. It is the most positive sum thing that you can do. Winning sets up a competitive dynamic that makes customers, employees, communities, and investors better off over time and opens up possibilities for rather than works against productive partnerships."

Puro sumo!!!

Five Feynman rules for Life: 🧠

i) Take mistakes as Lessons.
ii) Focus is the key.
iii) Study hard what interests you the most.
iv) Don't worry about what other people think.
v) Skills are more valuable than your grades.

— Prof. Feynman (@ProfFeynman) January 7, 2022

Para pessoas e para empresas. Puro sumo!!!

Acerca do i) recordo, para começar, "Managing the Unexpected - Sustained Performance in a Complex World" de Karl Weick e Kathleen Sutcliffe: 

"Preoccupation with failure, the first high-reliability organization (HRO) principle, captures the need for continuous attention to anomalies that could be symptoms of larger problems in a system."

Acerca do iii) recordo Youngme Moon e a mensagem de "Different" em "There’s nine times more to gain by elevating positive customers than by eliminating negative ones"

Acerca do iv) recordo David versus Golias em Lidar com os Golias!

Empreendedorismo e a Escola Austríaca

"1. Consumer sovereignty

Not only is the customer king, but all production aims to ultimately satisfy consumers in some sense by providing them with value. This value is entirely up to the consumer. Entrepreneurs can only provide the means, typically a good or a service, that help consumers become better off. Sometimes this requires educating the customer so that they understand the value of the product. And, typically, the value lies in their complete experience, not just what you sell.

2. Value determines price and costs are a choice

With value being in the eyes (and experience) of the consumer, the price they are asked to pay must be (much) lower. The entrepreneur’s job is to figure out at what price their product is attractive, and then choose a cost structure that allows for profit. In other words, the price is a guess based on what value consumers see in the product. 

...

3. Entrepreneurship is about creating tomorrow

...

“the ultimate source from which entrepreneurial profit and loss are derived is the uncertainty of the future constellation of demand and supply.'' What that means is individual entrepreneurs choose costs in the present to produce a product that must be sold in the near or distant future, whatever the market situation might be. That’s the uncertainty borne by the entrepreneur.

...

4. Seek to be a good monopolist

In standard economics models, competition is about offering the same or nearly the same goods competing on price. This is a terrible strategy for entrepreneurs, whose superpower is to facilitate value. ...

What benefits consumers most is entrepreneurs who aim to be good monopolists."

Trecho retirado de "Why Every Entrepreneur Should Study the Austrian School of Economics"

Promotor da concorrência imperfeita, dos monopólios informais e das rendas excessivas

"The neo-classical economists' poor understanding of how businesses operate also contributes to the problem. At the core of their economic theory of capitalism is perfect competition and equilibrium, a situation which produces very little profit. Any successful and profitable business enterprise rests, almost by definition, on some kind of rent-seeking. The poverty-stricken Third World corresponds most closely to conditions of diminishing returns and perfect competition, while the rich countries, whose exports are produced under conditions of Schumpeterian-dynamic imperfect competition, are `rent-seekers' whose rents lead to higher wages and a higher tax base. This failure to understand development as Schumpeterian imperfect competition is at the heart of the arguments against industrial policy. Anything that causes imperfect competition tends to be seen as contributing to `cronyism'.

Keynes saw investments resulting from what he called `animal spirits'. Without `animal spirits' - the will to invest in uncertain conditions - capital is sterile, both in the worlds of Joseph Schumpeter and Karl Marx. The motivating force behind `animal spirits' is the desire to maximize profits, thus upsetting the equilibrium of perfect competition."

Ontem, depois de ler isto fiquei a pensar no lema deste blogue, apregoado lá em cima no título e na sua forma mais completa aqui:

"Promotor da concorrência imperfeita, dos monopólios informais e das rendas excessivas"

Algo que descobri algures na primeira década do século XXI e que é considerado um sacrilégio pela Economia. Contudo, a solução para uma economia saudável, competitiva, produtiva, capaz de pagar bons salários e gerar lucros atraentes é por aqui.

Trecho retirado de "How Rich Countries Got Rich and Why Poor Countries Stay Poor" de Erik S. Reinert,

Acerca do capitalismo

Reinert outra vez:

"Once capitalism has been understood as a system of imperfect competition and unintended consequences rather than as a system of perfect markets, it is then possible to use this insight to craft wise economic policies."

Trecho retirado de “How Rich Countries Got Rich . . . and Why Poor Countries Stay Poor”

De volta à concorrência imperfeita

De volta à concorrência imperfeita:

"A small city-state devoid of resources but with a huge hinterland, like Hong Kong, may get rich in the same `natural' way as Venice and Holland did. Studying the inner mechanisms of such states, however, makes it clear that the principle of wealth creation - from the cost of a taxi licence in Hong Kong to the city's huge corporations - is not perfect competition, but rent seeking, that is, profiting from imperfect rather than from perfect competition."

Trecho retirado de "How Rich Countries Got Rich and Why Poor Countries Stay Poor" de Erik S. Reinert.

"Perfect markets are for the poor"

Continuo a leitura de "How Rich Countries Got Rich and Why Poor Countries Stay Poor" de Erik S. Reinert

"Europeans observed early on that generalized wealth was found only in areas where agriculture was absent or only played a marginal role, and came to be seen as an unintended by-product when many diverse branches of manufacturing were brought together in large cities. Once these mechanisms were understood, wise economic policy could spread wealth outside these few 'naturally wealthy' areas. Policies of emulation could, indeed, also spread wealth to formerly poor and feudal agricultural areas, but they involved massive market interventions. For laggard nations market interventions and wise economic policies could substitute for the natural and geographical advantages that produced the first wealthy states. We can further imagine that export taxes on raw materials and import taxes on finished products were originally means for raising revenues in poor nations, but that a by-product of these measures was to increase wealth through the growth of domestic manufacturing capacity. [Moi ici: Há aqui qualquer coisa que julgo ser verdade no que Reinert escreve acerca da origem da riqueza. No entanto, torço o nariz à solução que ele propõe, pelo menos para Portugal. A Irlanda deu o salto com uma intervenção estatal longe de "export taxes on raw materials and import taxes on finished products". Um país sem capital e sem experiência não pode voar, só trepar. A única forma de voar é atrair capital e know-how]

...

Thus rivalry, war and emulation in Europe created a dynamic system of imperfect competition and increasing returns. New knowledge and innovations spread in the economy as increased profits and increased wages, and as larger bases for government taxation. European economic policy was based for centuries on the conviction that the introduction of a manufacturing sector would solve the fundamental economic problems of the time, creating much-needed employment, profits, higher wages, a larger tax base and a better circulation of the currency. ... Standard textbook economics which seeks to understand economic development in terms of frictionless `perfect markets' totally misses the point. Perfect markets are for the poor. It is equally futile to try to understand this development in terms of what economists refer to as `market failure'. Compared to textbook economics, economic development is a giant failure of perfect markets."

Alguns textos sobre a concorrência perfeita:

• Promotor da concorrência imperfeita, dos monopólios informais e das rendas pornográficas (Março de 2021)
• Um adepto e promotor incondicional da concorrência imperfeita (Fevereiro de 2014)
• Cartão de visita (Agosto de 2011)

Moi ici: Let that sink in deep!!!

Há muitos anos que uso a assinatura "promotor da concorrência imperfeita".

Hoje, comecei a leitura de "How Rich Countries Got Rich and Why Poor Countries Stay Poor" de Erik S. Reinert, publicado em 2007.

Já este ano li grande parte de um livro do mesmo Reinert que achei fascinante, "The Visionary Realism of German Economics: From the Thirty Years' War to the Cold War".

Há anos li "Why Nations Fail" de Acemoglu e Robinson e considerei que a hipótese dos autores tem razão de ser. Reinert tem outra base, vamos ler.

Entretanto, nas primeiras páginas de Reinert apanho:

"At this point it is necessary to introduce and explain two sets of key terms that describe the differences between the economic activities that typically dominate the poor countries and those that dominate the rich countries: `perfect' and `imperfect' competition and `increasing' and `diminishing' returns.

`Perfect competition' or `commodity competition' means that the producer cannot influence the price of what he produces, he is facing a `perfect' market and literally reads in the newspaper what the market is willing to pay. ... Perfect competition and diminishing returns are assumed to be the normal state of affairs in standard textbook economics.

...

Rich countries display generalized imperfect competition, activities subject to increasing returns, and, as I gradually began to understand, all have become rich in exactly the same way, through policies steering them away from raw materials and diminishing returns activities into manufacturing, where the opposite laws tend to operate."

BTW:

"The logic that died with the Berlin Wall was that it is better to have an inefficient manufacturing sector than not to have a manufacturing sector at all, and such an approach has led to falling real wages in many countries in Eastern Europe, Asia, Africa and Latin America."[Moi ici: Let that sink in deep!!!]

Promotor da concorrência imperfeita, dos monopólios informais e das rendas pornográficas - sempre

Há anos que escrevo aqui sobre o truque alemão e a doença anglo-saxónica. Interessante apanhar isto em "The Visionary Realism of German Economics: From the Thirty Years' War to the Cold War". 

"The point of divergence between neoclassical economics and evolutionary economics can be traced back to pre- 19th Century philosophy. The Plato- Cusanus- Bruno- Leibniz- Wolff tradition has a dynamic world view emphasizing new knowledge and production— cast in the mode of ‘werden’, or becoming. The modern Anglo- American tradition is cast around the concept of ‘sein’— being. It emphasises a mechanical division of labour, and at its core we find the process of barter and exchange rather than production.[Moi ici: Interessante esta hipótese para a génese da diferença]

…

In the Plato- to- Wolff tradition, Man is different from animals because of his ability to think rationally according to principles, e.g. abstraction. Economics in this tradition becomes an optimistic science, because of Man’s seemingly unlimited capacity to invent. Economics in the English barter- centered tradition becomes a dismal science because, following up in Adam Smith’s metaphor, it is not clear why and how more dog bones, not to speak of canned dog food, would suddenly appear among a society of bartering dogs. The failure of neo-classical economics to incorporate technical change is deeply rooted in this tradition of seeing Man essentially as a bartering animal, and not as a creative and inventing one. Smith’s crucial insight on the ‘division of labour’, which in the end could not be attributable to barter alone, has not been incorporated into present mainstream economics. Mainstream economics focuses on ‘Man the Consumer’, whereas in the Wolff tradition focus is on ‘Man the Producer’.[Moi ici: Percebo agora o ponto de vista de Vera Gouveia Barros]

.

Another sign of Smith’s failure to see the importance of new ideas is his view that the rate of profit will have to fall. It is not well known that this idea, which was later to gain much prominence with Marx, actually originates with Adam Smith. In the absence of new ideas and inventions, the rate of profit will fall for three reasons, and it is not clear which of the three, or all, Smith refers to52. First, the rate of profit will fall because of a tendency towards a more perfect competition. Secondly, the rate of return on capital will fall because there will be more capital around, and more capital chasing the same number of investment opportunities will lead to a falling rate of profit. Thirdly, continuing progress would depend on a further division of labour. This Smith saw as tied to geographically expanding markets, which eventually will be saturated. Both Smith and Ricardo fail to understand that all these tendencies will be counteracted by a flow of new ideas and inventions which will both a) Increase the demand for capital in a growing economy, and b) Add new products which initially will be traded under conditions of temporary monopolies. This mechanism, whereby capitalists continuously have to seek new ideas and innovations in order to keep up the profit rate, is at the core of the Schumpeterian system. In this system, the fall of nations is accompanied by capital flight which starts when the national system fails to produce innovations.

…

In the English- based mainstream economics, under the assumption of perfect information, new learning is absent— or must be seen as ‘manna from heaven’. It is not clear that human will— in the form of inventions, business strategies, or economic policies— in any way can affect the size of the flow of manna. The connection between learning and welfare is here, at best, indirect through mechanical forces which are not consciously created. In neoclassical economics, all economic activities, for all practical purposes, tend to become ‘alike’. The world is populated by cloned ‘representative firms’, and government policy is supposed not to differentiate between firms or industries. In the Leibniz- Wolff cameralist tradition, as well as today’s evolutionary economics, the variety and uniqueness of human economic activities are central to the system. Canadian economist John Rae (1834) was the first to point out the connection between a society’s propensity to save and its propensity to invent: Savings were to Rae basically not a result of thrift, but of retained earnings from imperfect competition created by inventions and technical change."

 

"the search for new knowledge which creates imperfect competition"

 Outro trecho sobre a concorrência imperfeita:

"In both Adam Smith and in neo - classical theory there is in some fundamental way a contradiction between the notion of perfect markets and the way the economy adds knowledge. This problem spills over to how economic theory today explains profits. There is no incentive to produce new knowledge in perfect markets – the possibility of appropriating the fruits of new knowledge is absent. By letting new knowledge enter the system like ‘‘manna from heaven’’, the very engine of growth – the search for new knowledge which creates imperfect competition – is excluded from mainstream theory. For this reason, an understanding of how different degrees of imperfect competition is caused by conditions of production is at the very core of any understanding of economic growth. Economic theory, however, does not have a relevant theory of production, and of the role of human knowledge in this process."

Trecho retirado de "The Visionary Realism of German Economics: From the Thirty Years' War to the Cold War". 

Consequências da concorrência imperfeita

E continuava eu a minha leitura de "The Visionary Realism of German Economics: From the Thirty Years' War to the Cold War" durante a caminhada matinal de ontem quando tropeço nisto:

"Looking at history from a simple perspective of barter, not production, [Moi ici: Como não recordar as palavras de Vera Gouveia Barros sobre concorrência perfeita] and under diminishing returns/ single equilibrium/ perfect information, the importance of these policies is lost. In the diminishing return/ equilibrium perspective, any and all factors causing unequal economic growth are lost, creating the world of artificial harmony and world- wide factor- price equalisation. As we shall attempt to show later, a most important historical role of Adam Smith’s was precisely that of laying the ground for ‘‘perfect markets’’ and ‘‘natural harmony’’ by making the quest for knowledge into a zero- sum game – using the metaphor of a lottery – from the point of view of both the individual and the State. In this way Adam Smith effectively removed the quest for imperfect competition through new knowledge which was so important to Renaissance thinking. This is the root of why new knowledge and new technology hits today’s mainstream  economics as ‘‘manna from heaven’’.

...

Just as we today would see a career of washing dishes in a restaurant as having a limited potential for creating income compared with a career as a lawyer, the Renaissance economists extended this argument to apply to the common weal as well. In other words, they believed that the factors which created differences in welfare within an economy were the same factors which created differences in income between nations. As a result of the process of pre- Ricardian common sense, no factor- price equalisation would be achieved by putting all the people washing dishes in one nation and all the lawyers in another and open up for free trade between the two nations. In these theories economic growth is ‘‘activity- specific’’; it is only available in some economic activities subject to dynamic imperfect competition, and not in others.

...

What, then, are the characteristics of growth inducing – ‘‘good’’ – economic activities? We have, in several publications, provided a ‘‘quality index’’ of economic activities, listing the characteristics which, in a system of dynamic imperfect competition, ranks economic activities according to their ability to provide increasing economic welfare to a nation. This ‘‘quality index’’ is reproduced in Figure 2.2.

Differences in wage levels, both nationally and between nations, seem to result from varying degrees of imperfect competition – caused by both static and dynamic factors. The factors at work have long been identified both by businessmen and in industrial economics, and they are correlated. Figure 2.2 attempts to create an area from light to dark grey where ‘‘the quality’’ of economic activities at any time can be roughly plotted on a scale from white: ‘‘perfect competition’’ – to black: ‘‘monopoly’’. The latter is only a temporary state, as new technologies fall towards a lower score as they mature."

Sou um anónimo da província, mas há mais de 15 anos que descobri a virtude da concorrência imperfeita. Não porque tenha lido algo, mas porque estando do lado da produção, foi a alternativa que emergiu na minha cabeça, lá por volta de 2004 ou 2005, como sendo a única hipótese para fugir da guerra do preço onde as PMEs tugas nunca poderiam ter sucesso a competir com a China. Por que é que  os académicos tugas, membros da famosa triade, ainda lá não chegaram?

Recordo os encalhados, os paineleiros da tríade.

Promotor da concorrência imperfeita, dos monopólios informais e das rendas pornográficas

Este é o meu mote para o trabalho que desenvolvo na área da gestão com PMEs.

Ontem, ouvi o podcast do programa "Tempestade perfeita", na rádio Observador do passado dia 22 e sorri ao ouvir o início da intervenção de Vera Gouveia Barros. E recordei um livro de economia de César das Neves onde ele incluía um subcapítulo sobre a beleza da concorrência perfeita.

Pois bem, este anónimo engenheiro da província continua a assumir-se como um promotor da concorrência imperfeita, dos monopólios informais e das rendas pornográficas. 

• Fugir de eficiência (Dezembro de 2017)

Pois bem, este anónimo engenheiro da província continua a assumir-se como alguém que vê como algo interessante o fim das patentes.

• Num mundo sem patentes (Setembro de 2019)

Defendem-se as patentes com o argumento de que sem elas não haveria inovação em muitos campos. Pois eu penso exactamente o contrário. Sem patentes, o ritmo da inovação seria maior. 

Voltemos às palavras de Vera Gouveia Barros: "Em Economia Industrial nós mostramos como a solução mais próxima da concorrência perfeita é aquela que traz mais bem estar no seu total"

E ponho-me a pensar: 

• quem são os alunos formatados por Vera Gouveia Barros? Qual vai ser o seu destino? 
• o que é isto de "bem estar no seu total"?

Quem trabalha para uma PME em Portugal deve ter cuidado com este tipo de conversa. Uma PME que compita num mercado com concorrência perfeita não tem qualquer hipótese de sobrevivência num espaço aberto onde outros; à custa de um mercado doméstico de maior dimensão, à custa de mais capital, à custa de menores constrangimentos das partes interessadas, terão sempre vantagem!!!

Quem trabalha para uma PME tem uma prioridade: "Your job is to make all things unequal"

Quem trabalha para uma PME tem de se comportar como um pequeno mamífero no tempo dos dinossauros, tem de ser ágil e fugir para espaços onde possa criar algum tipo de concorrência imperfeita a seu favor. 

Como é possível continuar a encher mentes susceptíveis com estas doutrinas? David tem tudo a ganhar em fugir de um confronto de igual para igual com Golias. 

Num mundo de concorrência perfeita:

Num mundo de concorrência imperfeita:

Live and let live!

"we do not live in a world of perfect competition" (parte III)

Parte I and part II.

Mais uns trechos de "Windows of Opportunity: How Nations Make Wealth".  

"Finally, I will argue that there is a ladder of economic development, the rungs of which represent products that require increasing amounts of organisational and technological capability, and which produce increasing amounts of value-added per capita due to fewer companies being able to produce them.

...

How, then, do firms increase their value-added per capita? Assuming they are not overmanned they can do it in two ways. They can increase their production efficiency by innovation or they can create a competitive advantage over their rivals based on a capabilities/market-opportunity dynamic. The first will reduce the denominator, and the second will increase the nominator in the calculation of value-added per capita.[Moi ici: Olha, olha, a minha referência ao denominador e ao numerador.] 

...

Where there is perfect competition, as in neoclassical growth theory, it is not possible for firms to gain a competitive advantage over their rivals, enabling them to raise the willingness of their customers to pay for their product or service. The entrepreneur cannot influence the price of what he produces. He or she sees or reads on their mobile phone what the market is willing to pay and is a price-taker rather than a price-maker. This situation, however, is only found in a few commodity markets for agricultural or mining products. Business-people will often refer to a product becoming a commodity, meaning it should be avoided because it is not possible to create a competitive advantage and achieve a high level of value-added.

In most markets, however, competition is not the perfect competition of neoclassical economics, and in any country at any one time, opportunities will exist in specific industries for a firm to create a competitive advantage by differentiating its product or service andmaking it more attractive to its customers.

It should be noted, however, that when an entrepreneur creates a competitive advantage, and increases value-added per capita for a firm, he also creates a disequilibrium, which as soon as it is established sets in motion the competitive process that leads to its destruction.

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Standard textbook economics to understand economic development in terms of frictionless "perfect markets" totally misses the point. Perfect markets are for the poor."

"we do not live in a world of perfect competition" (parte II)

Parte I.

Mais uns trechos de "Windows of Opportunity: How Nations Make Wealth". 

"Very few countries have ever developed by means other than innovation, learning [Moi ici: The race to the top] and the growth exceptions to this rule have been of industrial production.

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it is the production-capability school of thought that has proved most to policy-makers trying to increase the growth rates of their countries; while a harsh assessment would conclude that the market-efficiency school of thought, including neoclassical economics, proved most useful to policy-makers trying to stop other countries from catching them up and competing against them.

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Starting at the beginning of the twentieth century, neoclassic economists came to view the economic problem as being the optimal allocation of scarce resources rather than one of generating productivity to overcome conditions of scarcity. [Moi ici: Era outro tempo. Recordar isto] 

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The premise of neoclassical theory is that, if the investments are made, the acquisition and mastery of new ways of doing things is relatively easy, even automatic. [Moi ici: Recordar isto acerca do plano de recuperação e resiliência. Macacos trepam, não voam] 

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[neo-classical economic theory] It does not see production as it in the observable world; that is, as a complex process which involves innovation and the creation of competitive advantage, and which needs an entrepreneeur to make it happen.

Secondly, it underestimates heterogeneity of production activities within and across production sectors. It ignores the issue of both what is being produced (i.e. the product) and how it is being produced i.e. the technologies and organisation used). [Moi ici: Este foi um dos temas que sempre me fez espécie, ninguém fala da variabilidade intersectorial]

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The third element is the capability of a firm, which enables it to apply the activity-specific technology to producing the product or service in order to meet market demand, thus creating a capability/market-opportunity dynamic.  [Moi ici: É sempre mais fácil culpar o contexto externo]

The fourth element is the institutions of the country where the firm is located, which enable the capability/market-opportunity dynamic to operate effectively.  [Moi ici: Recordar "Why Nations fail". Recordar que o futuro tem um custo, se as empresas não se podem capitalizar, não podem enfrentar o futuro de forma séria e proactiva... viram zombies]

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Because neoclassical economists have not been able to quantify these four elements and so include them in their mathematical models, they have not been able to explain why different sectors in an economy have different levels of value-added growing at different rates. 

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the growth rate of country depends on what is happening to the value-added per capita in each of its different sectors as a result of the capability/market-opportunity dynamic, and on any shift in the distribution of economic activity across sectors. [Moi ici: Racional perfeito para fugir aos mitos]

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[the dynamic capability school] does not assume the market economy is one of perfect competition, in which every firm is selling the same product at the same price as its competitors. This is a completely unrealistic view of the world, as can be seen by a quick trip to any shopping centre or car showroom. Instead, the dynamic capability theory assumes that, in a competitive market economy, firms compete by trying to gain a competitive advantage over their rivals, [Moi ici: Aqui torço o nariz a este trecho. Sim, mas! É outra vez o fenómeno da obliquidade, mas mais ainda. A economia não é necessariamente um jogo de soma nula. A economia não é uma guerra para eliminar o advsersário, o sucesso das empresas passa por satisfazer os clientes. Cuidado com o Dick Dastardly] as this is what enables them to grow and their profitability. It also assumes that this same type of competition exists between firms in different countries and is what determines in the long term what goods and services a country exports and imports.

The essential question that economic growth theory raises, therefore, is how do firms gain a competitive advantage over their rivals? There are two ways they can do this. Firms can either reduce the cost of their product or service through innovations in their production methods, or use innovation to make their product more attractive to their customers by better meeting their needs through enhanced performance, more functionality or improved design." [Moi ici: Recordar as três regras]

"we do not live in a world of perfect competition"

Apesar do pouco tempo livre, comecei a ler "Windows of Opportunity: How Nations Make Wealth". Está a ser uma excelente leitura e dá para fazer várias pontos co o que fui escrevendo aqui no blogue ao longo dos anos.

"We also need to understand that there is no economic law that says that all advanced countries will see their economies grow indefinitely, especially when they are being challenged by the rise of countries such as China today.

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The market-efficiency school of thought includes the Physiocrats, Adam Smith, David Ricardo, Alfred Marshall, Paul Samuelson and Paul Krugman. The production-capability school of thought includes such figures as Alexander Hamilton, Friedrich List, the German Historical School and Joseph Schumpeter.

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According to the production-capability school, however, wealth originates from innovation and creativity, with the accumulation of assets taking place as a result of discoveries and innovations changing people's stock of knowledge and their tools.

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Secondly, the analytical focus of the two schools of thought is different. In the market-efficiency school, the focus of analysis is on barter and men and women as traders. In the production-capability school, the focus is on production and men and women as innovative producers.

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Thirdly, because the market-efficiency school of thought was based on the trade and commerce conducted by the English, the English economists who played a large part in developing it came to see all economic activities as being qualitatively alike.[Moi ici: BINGO!!! Recordar o lead deste postal]

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As a result, while the production-capability school of thought sees different economic activities as offering different 'windows of opportunity' for achieving national welfare, the market-efficiency school of thought sees all economic activities as having the same potential.

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Finally, the production-capability school of thought sees no limits to progress, believing in the 'never-ending frontier of human knowledge.

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[Friedrich] List also understood that innovation is the engine of economic growth

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[Schumpeter] saw competition as a dynamic process of moving from one disequilibrium to another, rather than a process of moving towards equilibrium.

Secondly, he understood that we do not live in a world of perfect competition,  [Moi ici: BINGO!!!] and that the traditional theorist's focus solely on price is wrong. As he said:

In the capitalist reality as distinguished from its textbook picture, it is not [price] competition that counts but the competition from the new commodity, the new technology, the new source of supply, the new type of organisation (the largest-scale unit of control for instance)."

Thirdly, he saw the process of innovation as the engine of economic growth, remarking, "without innovation, no entrepreneurs, without entrepreneurial achievement, no capitalist returns and no capitalist propulsion?"

Value from imperfection - Decommoditize

Há tempos criei um site para começar a alimentar o que dentro de anos poderá ser um mercado mais relevante para a minha actividade profissional. Chamei a esse site "Value From Imperfection".

Muitos perguntam-me o porquê deste nome.

Há minutos encontrei no Twitter uma boa introdução à explicação do nome:

Commodify is the shift from social to economic value (i.e. the first commercial instance of something)

Commoditise is the shift from imperfect to perfect competition (i.e. creation of a commodity or a utility market)

The two are very different. Don't mix them.

— Simon Wardley (@swardley) December 5, 2020

Reparem naquele "Commoditise is the shift from imperfect to perfect competition".

Quem são os meus clientes-alvo? PMEs industriais que procuram servir clientes com bens e serviços transaccionáveis. Estamos a falar de empresas que não podem competir pelo preço mais baixo, empresas que têm de arranjar outra vantagem competitiva que não o preço. Empresas que têm de subir na escala de valor, empresas que têm de fugir da comoditização: um mercado comoditizado é um mercado em que o que conta é o preço mais baixo. 

O que aprendi há anos e está ali ao lado na coluna das citações é: 

"When something is commoditized, an adjacent market becomes valuable"

Quando um mercado fica comoditizado entra a competência perfeita, reina a eficiência pura e dura, o sucesso é para quem é maior e consegue economias de escala. Recordo o maluco académico americano que até queria acabar com as marcas para promover a concorrência perfeita. Segundo ele, Camberlin, o valor de marcas como a Apple acontece por causa de ""ignorance" or the "imperfect knowledge" that results from "the reprehensible creation by businessmen of purely fictitious differences between products which are by nature fundamentally uniform"." 

Qualquer PME deve fugir da concorrência perfeita como o diabo da Cruz, daí a minha assinatura de anos: promotor da concorrência imperfeita e dos monopólios informais.

As PMEs devem estar sempre à procura das imperfeições no mercado, é delas que se pode retirar mais valor. Até porque é inevitável. A imperfeição de hoje mais tarde ou mais cedo deixa de ser mistério e transforma-se em algoritmo e reina a comoditização: